Tag Archives: Wolf Creek Tavern

General, Laura Grimes, Music, Theater

Now I’ve got that job: a back-breaker before it begins

2 Comments

The Crooked Man, Project Gutenberg

Bent beneath the weight of sudden responsibilities and an uncooperative lower back, Mrs. Scatter staggers to the first meeting of her Important New Job. Drawing: “The Crooked Man,” from Project Gutenberg.

————————————————

Did you hear I got a new job? If you missed the first two installments, read …

Part 1: The short-lived dream of running for president.
Part 2: The bizarre, twisted tale of how the job found me.

A brief recap:

  • Blissful summer.
  • No job and no plans for a job.
  • Alvin and the Chipmunks.
  • A mysterious Jane nominates me for president.
  • White House hopes dashed.
  • Two Large Smelly Liabilities.
  • Love Jane.
  • Love Third Angle.
  • Love Ron.
  • Earflap hats.
  • Flying rockets.
  • Killer water fights.
  • Trick-or-treat.
  • Urinating dog.
  • FaceBook.
  • Frozen Music – City Dance.
  • Date night.
  • Sunny beach.
  • Typing into phone.
  • Junior Rose Parade.
  • Auto parts store.
  • Pickles!

I made the big announcement on FaceBook:

Say hello to the new managing director of Third Angle New Music Ensemble! I’m excited to work with my old friend Ron Blessinger. It’s the one job that could have lured me back to the work world before I had planned.

And then I had a little exchange with one of my “friends.”


Mighty Toy Cannon: “Hey congratulations. Welcome to the arts administrators’ club.”

Miss Laura: “Will you show me the secret handshake?”

MTC: “Once I’ve learned the handshake for the League of Tough-Guy Arts Observers! I’d also be happy to pass along the code book and the secret map to hidden treasures.”

Miss Laura: “I hope finding the secret treasures doesn’t involve dark passageways filled with giant spiders and booby-trapped blades that take heads off.”

OK, so I didn’t fully disclose on my resume that I had once worked as a clerk in an auto parts store.

I really don’t think that’s any excuse not to be up front about the booby-trapped blades.

Everything amazingly clicked into place. My grand scheme was to take the summer off, then come up with a whole new career. So I went on vacation, drove home on Labor Day and went to a meeting that night.

It was to be my first job duty. My first impression. My first official act of my Whole New Career.

But first … the day before my big debut I woke up in a nice cottage in Ashland, walked across the hall, stepped on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and suddenly went HOLY MOTHER OF GOD I’M SORRY I WAS BORN WITH LEGS!

My entire lower back seized up and wouldn’t let go. I could hardly walk.

I thought a nice warm shower would take care of it. No such luck. I took a couple of ibuprofen. Mildly better.
Continue reading Now I’ve got that job: a back-breaker before it begins →

Bob Hicks, Books, General, Language

Interlude: On Wolf Creek and Jack London and a literary grocery clerk

Leave a comment

Wolf Creek TavernToday, after a matinee performance of All’s Well That Ends Well, the extended Scatter Family leaves Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for dinner, bed and breakfast at the old Wolf Creek Tavern north of Grants Pass before a Labor Day drive back to Portland.

And by coincidence, today I have an essay in the books pages of the Sunday Oregonian that is inspired partly by a visit more than a year ago to the Wolf Creek Tavern, where Jack London stayed a spell in 1911 and wrote his short story The End of the Story. The essay took seed many months later when I was buying groceries back in Portland and encountered a checkout clerk who insisted on letting his customers know how much he liked Rudyard Kipling and detested Jack London. You never know where The Beginning of the Story is going to come from.

You can check out the essay, A Portland Moment: Literary Criticism in the Grocery Line, in the O! section of today’s Oregonian. Or, you can read it online here, on Oregon Live.